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Maths in the movies and more

If you've been following Plus coverage on maths in the movies and theatre, and happen to find yourself in Edinburgh next week, then check out the Edinburgh International Science Festival's movie
season and complementary talks. The themed season looks at the way mathematicians are represented in different kinds of narrative: pure fiction, fictionalised real life and documentary. The pure fiction offering is The Oxford Murders, starring John Hurt and Elijah Wood, screened on
April the 7th. The Hollywood retelling of the story of maths students taking on the Las Vegas casinos is the second film, 21. It stars Kevin Spacey and is screened on the 9th of April. The season concludes on the 16th of April with the documentary N is a number, a film portrait of Paul Erdös. This screening will be followed by an audience and panel discussion.

To complement the film theme, on the 14th of April Academy Award winner David Baraff of Pixar Animation Studios will be giving a talk on the role of mathematical modelling in computer animation, illustrated with clips and computer graphics. There will also be a screening of Pixar's Oscar winning tale of a French rat's ambition to be a chef, Ratatouille. David Baraff will give a special introduction to the film at Filmhouse Cinema earlier that afternoon.

And if you prefer live entertainment to film, you could head for Allen Knutson's presentation on the relationship between mathematics and juggling. By mathematically analysing the process of juggling, Knutson, of Cornell University, found it was possible to discover new tricks that may never have
come to light otherwise. This promises to be a most entertaining event as Allen demonstrates the principles involved using his dazzling juggling skills. The event takes place early in the evening of 14 April.

1 Comments:

For the juggling, Allen Knutson has this nice PDF on juggling, http://math.ucsd.edu/~allenk/Roma2008/r.pdf, which starts out easy, gradually getting to be harder and harder math. It gives a little insight into how a mathematician approaches things.

The Plus new writers award has now closed

The Plus new writers award 2009, our writing competition inviting you to share your favourite bit of maths with the rest of the world, has now closed. We've had a great response, so if you have submitted an article, but not yet received confirmation of receipt, don't worry. We're working through the stacks of entries and you'll hear from us within the next few days. Thanks for taking
part!

0 Comments:

What would you like to know about your Universe — The second poll

This poll is now closed. The most popular question was: "Are the constants of nature really constant?" We will publish the answer in an article and podcast on Plus shortly. Thank you for taking part!

This is our second online poll in our series to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Choose your favourite question from the list on the right, and we'll put the one that proves most popular to world-leading astronomers and cosmologists, including Astronomer Royal Martin Rees and author and cosmologist John D. Barrow. The poll will
remain open for a month and the answer will be published in a Plus article and podcast soon after. If your most burning question is not on this list, then leave a comment on this blog and we'll endeavour to include it in a future poll — there will be five more polls dotted throughout the year.

The most popular question in our first poll was "What happened before the Big Bang?". You can now read the mind-boggling answer here on Plus, and discuss it on our blog.

7 Comments:

I would be interested to know about the rings of Saturn. Particular points might be:
- Why is Saturn the only planet in the solar system with rings (or is it?)?
- How dense are the rings - would it be possible for a space vehicle to go through them or would it be destroyed in the attempt?
- How quickly are the rings orbiting the planet or are they in stationary orbit?
- What are the rings comprised of - dust, larger particles?
Terry Schooling

I'd love John to explain what a "Boltzmann Brain" is - that was one of the freakiest things I heard at the very Early Universe conference in 2007 - a very odd merger of Physics, astronomy and philosophy!

Saturn is not the only planet with rings. All the gas giants have them.
- The rings are mostly dust,ice, and cosmic debris so any attempt to go through them would possibly destroy any ship that goes through it.

In the last ever paragraph of 'A brief History of Time' Stephen Hawking predicts the unified theory, which can empower scientists, philosophers and public to know the nature of God. I would like to know the efforts in this direction, how do we get there and what are the immediate obstacles before us.

Also nice would be a discussion whether free will exists and whether the universe is deterministic; and are both concepts equivalent?

On matters closer to Earth, I wonder how the LHC finds answers within the terabytes streaming from its detecctors.

We would like to apologise to everyone who, due to a technical glitch on Plus, haven't been able to register their vote on this second poll. We're very pleased to announce the problem is now resolved, and you can once again tell us what you would like to know about your Universe!

What is the universe made of... quite a broad question. I was torn between this question, and the shape of the universe question. I eventually chose shape as my curiosity. I don't think "Why are planets round" warranted the opportunity to be on such a pole... it's clearly because gravity is a central force, so stuff settles that way. To the person who is curious how gravity works, read a bit
about general relativity, Einstein answered that question with some math he borrowed from brilliant men. And Jesvin, as far as Stephen Hawking and his discussion of guts goes, there hasn't been much progress. Firstly, I hope it's understood that Hawking uses the word god as a metaphor, not unlike Einstien did. Secondly, look for a blog by Peter Woit of Columbia University called "Not Even Wrong."
We, as physicists an mathematicians, are far from a unified theory of everything. In fact, it might not even be possible to come up with one.

In our online poll to find out what Plus readers would most like to know about the Universe, you told us that you'd like to find out what happened before the Big Bang. We took the question to the renowned cosmologist John D. Barrow, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and here is his
answer. The Universe is an infinitely self-perpetuating foam of bubbles, it seems...

Read more and feel free to discuss the answer by leaving a comment on this blog. We'll periodically check back with the experts to try and answer interesting further questions.

5 Comments:

Barrow's remark in his final sidebar that dark matter "consists of stars that don't shine in the dark,..." seems a little beyond our current knowledge. While evidence indicates dark matter reacts to gravity, do we have data showing that its clustering actually produces star-like bodies? ...and thus, by extension, perhaps even "dark black" holes??

This may be the best bit of cosmology for the lay person I've ever read.

Until very recently there has been a strong bias toward the view that the observable universe is representative of the universe as a whole. Barrow does a very good job of looking beyond this to suggest that there is probably a whole range of "universes" and that ours seems special only insofar as we seem to be in the center of it.

Someday historians of science may look back on the conception of the "multiverse" in much the same way as we view the Copernican revolution and the vastly more unsettling recognition of "island universes" (galaxies). As first our solar system and then our galaxy seemed islands in something much more vast and unknowable, so too is the bubble we call the "universe"

One of our readers asked (in response to the accompanying podcast) whether the laws of physics have to be the same in each bubble. We asked Professor Barrow and here is his response:

""Indeed, we know that in some theories of fundamental physics there is the possibility that important aspects of physics, like the strengths of basic forces or the masses of elementary particles, will fall out differently in the
different regions we have called 'bubbles'. Other local features, like the level of non-uniformity in the material density or the balance between matter and antimatter may also be different.

At present we don't believe there can exist atom-based life like ours except where things are very close to what we
observe in our 'bubble'.

String theory also allows the number of large dimensions of space to be different from one bubble to another. But we know that with more than three large space dimensions no atoms or planets or stars can exist. The attractive forces of nature fall off too rapidly with distance to hold things together. For example, in an N dimensional space the familiar 'inverse square' laws of gravity and
electromagnetism become inverse (N-1) laws."

What the author fails to do is answer the basic question, "What happened before the Big Bang?", or "What existed prior to the creation of the material universe?" He simply answers (paraphrasing), "The source was quantum foam", or "It has always existed", neither of which provide any sort of solid answer. Where did the 'quantum foam' come from?Until he can provide definitive information on the
origin of life and the universe, then all his words are fantastic hot air at best and complete bluffing and deception at worst.

Is it possible that before the big bang the Universe or whatever we want to call it, was in fact composed of super condensed black matter. At the centre of this matter and due to extreme gravitational forces a portion,particle of light matter came into existance and the interaction of light matter and dark matter created the Universe as we know it today, ie dark matter is now at the edge of
the universe and accelerating pulling the exisitng Galaxies with it ,expanding the universe. When the fabric of the dark matter becomes for want of a better word thinned out,the accelerating light matter will come into contact with sufficient dark matter to reverse the whole process making the universe 99.999% dark matter, unitl the gravitational forces once again create particles of light matter
and once again interact with the dark matter, thus repeating the whole exercise again and again. Also could we know call the God particle the initial interacting light material

The Abel Prize 2009

The Abel Prize 2009 will be announced tomorrow, March 26th, and you will be able to view the ceremony live in the Abel prize webcast. The ceremony announcing the winner of one of the most prestigious pirzes of mathematics will begin at 11am UK time (12 noon Norwegian time), and
soon after Plus will give you more details.